Hello Everyone,
Thank you to the many people who responded with suggestions and advice. It
seems that these items are widely available - my search was hindered by the
fact that I did not know what they were called. Look for "tacky mats" or
"clean room mats" in most lab-supply catalogues. Everyone agreed that these
mats are great conversation pieces, and most respondents have had positive
experiences with them, although, as you will see below, there are some
reservations. A summary of the comments I received follows.
Thanks again to everyone who responded!
Regards,
Guy Bernard
----------------------------------------------
We have used these for years, and they work great. Also, good conversation
piece. We use, VWR adhesive floor mats, cat# 21924-154, 18X54in, 30
sheets/mat and 4 mats/carton.
We use these tacky mats to the entrance to the NMR lab as well as every
laboratory where beta-lactams and cephalosporins are used. They are
blue sticky sheets and you peel and throw them away when the top one
becomes dirty. You can get them in packs of 30 sheets from VWR.
You can get these floor mats from anyone who sells materials for cleanrooms.
For example, VWR sells them (search at their website under tacky floor
mats). They even have little numbers in the corner to tell you how many
sheets of the mat you have remaining! Each mat will probably last a day or
two, depending on how much traffic you get, and it's a good idea to make the
mat big enough that people have to put both feet down on it (i.e., put down
two mats if you have to).
We have a 600 on vinyl tiled floor. TAt the room entrance is a 3'x5'
rubber fingered mat purchased from an office supply house. It
seems to work fine...little or no metallic debris at the base of
the magnet after several years. The environment is not particularly
taxing...no nearby machine shop, etc. and the original purpose was
to reduce winter muck and grit.
I used the mat for a year . It dose work very well . You may like to
use it for a few months after your construction is over,
I suggest that users change to slippers (personal and communal) at the
entrance (put a bench across the door that needs to be stepped over). I
have seen this in a few labs and it appears to be a good practise to
avoid 'magnetic dust' in the magnet. I am not very fond of carpet in the
lab for the same reasons. Difficult to clean compared to a vinyl floor.
We ordered our sticky mats from VWR part # 21924-648. They are 18"x36".
They have a number of different sizes. I would be as concerned, if not more
concerned, about static electricity build-up and shorting out electrical
components. You may want to talk with the apps people about this issue.
We use sticky mats (or tacky mats) at the entrance door our NMR areas. You
can get them from Fisher Scientific. They work well and we have used them
for ~ 15 years. They have I think 30 layers to peel off so a mat will last
us about 3/4 of a year or so depending on traffic.
My humble thoughts are that the things look OK to impress visitors, but
they really don't do anything. We have vinyl flooring before and after
these mats. After is our instrument that gets dusty and dirty mainly
because of forced air poor filtering and from cryogen tank wheels. If we
had better filtering and a carpet for the cryogen tanks to roll on that
could be readilly cleaned then the room would not get dirty as fast.
Check out the Mat Depot
http://www.matdepot.com/
We have been using Tacky Mats for some time and they make a big difference.
We are currently using Benchmark Product 24x46. This is four to a box for
$171.00 24x46. There are 30 sheets per mat and last about 15 weeks because
we tear off two sheets per week. We purchase these through HP Products out
of Indianapolis.
Room E3-23B
Department of Chemistry
University of Alberta
Edmonton AB T6G 2G2
Canada
Tel: +1-780-492-5732
Fax: +1-780-492-8231
email: guy.bernard_at_ualberta.ca
Received on Fri Aug 30 2002 - 19:45:33 MST